


Gather Day

by Lanerose



Category: Dragonriders of Pern - Anne McCaffrey
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 16:42:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1096220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lanerose/pseuds/Lanerose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>F'lar and Lessa visit a Gather at Ruatha.  Ambiguous timeline circa Dragonsong and Dragonflight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gather Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [huntingosprey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/huntingosprey/gifts).



The Gather Flag flying high over Ruatha waved cheerfully as Lessa and Ramoth emerged from Between above the Hold. The view had changed many times over the turns. Lessa distantly recalled the Hold of her youth, in good repair and good spirits, with buildings aging but carefully maintained. She had seen it at the end of a Pass, when some of those same old building had been brand new and the rough patches of grass that had been burnt to remove Thread were just beginning to fill in again. And she would never forget it as she had seen it on her last day as a drudge, when F’lar plucked her away from the barren, broken place that Fax had turned her home into, so desolate that none but those most desperate would approach.

 _It is good to see your birthplace thriving_ , Ramoth commented.

“Yes," Lessa murmured as they swooped down and into the courtyard below, “it is.”

Ruatha had broken under Fax, yes, but what is broken can sometimes be repaired or reborn. So, too, had the clean and bright place in which they landed, where the herdbeasts were again fat in the fields that were lush with the weight of a fresh harvest. Lessa jumped down from Ramoth’s back, patting the dragon’s side lightly before Ramoth took off for the heights.

“Good to be back?” F’lar asked, appearing by her side as Mnementh followed Ramoth off.

“Always.” She said, starting to walk towards the Gather. F’lar walked with her, comfortably by her side. “Better to see the Hold doing so well. We must find Lytol and tell him so.”

“No regrets about leaving, then?” he asked, and though his lips were smiling, his eyes looked yet a bit sober. She looked around the Hold.

“Well, it certainly would have saved me a lot of trouble to have stayed,” Lessa said acerbically.

“You? It would have saved you a lot of trouble?” F’lar asked, incredulous.

“Just think - no worrying about organizing wings, or weyrlings, no Oldtimers or need to jump back in time four hundred years - to say nothing of needing to discover that dragons could travel in time or fight to be permitted to fly on my dragon,” Lessa said. “I would only have had to worry about when thread would fall, and only when it would fall over Ruatha, not anywhere else!”

“Yes,” F’lar replied, “and I could have avoided having to worry about whether the Weyrwoman would decide to startle the Lord-Holders of Pern simply because she could, you’ve already mentioned the Oldtimers, and of course whether we might have to get on with Kylara as Weyrwoman because ours had disappeared without a trace.”

Lessa would have glared at him, but she could feel Ramoth stirring anxiously at the back of her mind and hurriedly reassured the dragon.

“I suppose,” she said, strolling past the stalls for the tanners and the Smiths, “that on balance I prefer the current situation. After all, I have Ramoth.”

“So you only put up with us for Ramoth?” F’lar said, and if his eyes had been even a fraction less concerned she might have spurned him off again.

 _Really, Lessa?_ asked Mnementh anxiously. She could feel the warmth of Ramoth’s presence in her heart and could hear the gold dragon’s pleasure in the warm day’s sun as she grabbed F’lar’s hand and sent warm thoughts at Mnementh.

“Well,” she said, “perhaps not only Ramoth.”

“No?” He asked, and his eyes were alive and laughing again.

“Of course!” She allowed herself a vicious little grin. “There’s Mnementh, too, and the other dragons -“

“Benden! Weyrwoman!” A smooth baritone voice cut off whatever objection F’lar had clearly been about to make, and they turned as one to see Masterharper Robinton and Lord-Warder Lytol approaching, a stocky man with dark hair accompanying them. “We’d been looking for you!”

The Harper smiled as he approached them, but Lessa felt a thrum of concern from Ramoth and made a point of looking closer. At least as F’nor told the story, Robinton had snuck into the Hall the night of Jaxom’s birth and Fax’s agreement to be gone from Ruatha by playing first a drudge, and then a soldier. Fax’s guards may not have been the brightest, but they were also not completely idiotic. Indeed, though he smiled at them, the corners of his eyes were tight with what might have been concern.

“Master Robinton!” Lessa greeted him warmly. “Lord-Warder! Good Gatherday to you both.”

“And to you as well, Weyrwoman,” said Lytol. “Ruatha is always pleased to welcome you home here.”

And if there was an ugly part of her that was somewhat bitter at not being the person to say those words to others, at not being the first female Lord-Holder in a number of turns, it was entirely easy to bury under the glow of Ramoth’s love and the sincerity of the warmth with which she had been greeted.

“And where is Lord Jaxom today?” F’lar asked as the men shook hands. “Off getting into trouble?”

“Not if he knows what’s good for him, I’m sure,” Lytol replied. “He’s probably off enjoying a bubbly pie or two and, if we have any luck at all, keeping away from Brand.”

“Brand?” Lessa inquired.

“A fosterling, Weyrwoman, with whom he cannot seem to get along in spite of their many years together.” Lytol shrugged lightly. “I’ve often set them to work together to teach young Lord Jaxom that we must work together even with those whom we would prefer to avoid, but there is a limit to how long they can tolerate one another and I judge it best if they remain apart from one another today.”

“Boys will be boys,” said the stocky man who had been trailing Robinton and Lytol, a mischievous little smile quirking up the corners of his mouth.

Lessa could see a guitar slung across his back. She therefore turned to the Harper. “And who is this, Master Robinton?”

The Harper, who apparently had been staring off into space, startled to attention. “Ah, my apologies! Weyrwoman, this is Master Domick, who is head of composition and theory at the Harper Hall. He composed many of the pieces that you will hear later today. Domick, I’m quite sure you recognize Lessa, the Benden Weyrwoman, and Weyrleader F’lar.”

“A pleasure,” said Domick, who bowed to kiss her hand before shaking F’lar’s firmly.

“A composer?” Lessa said thoughtfully. The only new song that she could recall had been - . Her face turned downward with displeasure. “So it’s you I have to thank for the new song about fire lizards, then? And all of the Lord-Holders now pestering me for them?”

“Lessa -“ said F’lar, but Domick cut him off.

“Ah, the Weyrwoman’s not a fan of fire lizards,” he said lightly. “There may be a song in that. Something about irony, I’m sure.”

Lessa fumed.

“Please don’t mind Domick,” said Robinton smoothly. “We tend to keep him at the Hall to ensure that no one takes his words the wrong way and sticks him with a belt knife. As it happens, that particular song was written by Petiron’s missing apprentice.”

“Missing?” F’lar looked at the Harper quizzically, and Lessa knew her own face had twisted likewise. “Was he not at the Hall?”

“Unfortunately no,” the Harper replied. “That is what I had hoped to speak with you about today. You see, Petiron taught the boy at Half-Circle Sea Hold, and he seems to have disappeared.”

“Half-Circle?” F’lar started, and Lessa turned to him, surprised. “That’s the second missing person I’ve heard from that Hold in as many days. One of our wingleaders reported in that their youngest daughter was missing after Threadfall.”

“Poor girl,” the Harper said.

Lessa snorted. “Anyone idiotic enough to get caught outside of shelter during Threadfall deserves whatever may occur to them. Threads are more predictable than the weather.”

“Yes, and it speaks ill of Half-Circle as well,” said F’lar. “The Hold is scarcely large enough to cause such a commotion. Did your harper there happen to mention what had become of the lad?”

“He sent notes by ship and ... unfortunately passed away before our return message requesting the boy’s name arrived,” Robinton replied.

Odd. Lessa had never known the Harper’s voice to break, and again the sense of concern from Ramoth welled up inside her.

“Your father was even more of a traditionalist than I am,” Domick said with a snort. “And you of all people know how frequently the apprentices bemoan my demands.”

A silence fell upon them, and Lessa took a moment to let the words catch up with her.

“My condolences on your loss,” Lytol said, F’lar murmuring the same.

The Harper smiled, but it was a horrible, awful little smile that lacked anything close to his usual joy in the expression as if the act he had been putting on for them had stretched at last a little too thin. With a tiny cry, Lessa jumped forward and embraced him, heedless of the gather around them.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, regretting only that he was too tall to be properly held. After a moment, brief though probably longer than strictly proper, she stepped back.

“Ah, please don’t worry,” the Harper said as she released him. “We were never terribly close, and he was never quite the same after my mother’s death. In some ways, he will be happier with her in the beyond than he would be were he still living.”

The Harper smiled, more rueful than anything. “Though I do wish that he could have left the name of his last apprentice.”

The group laughed, a somber sort of a laugh, but a laugh nonetheless.

“Well, Harper, we’ll keep an ear to the ground when next we’re there.” F’lar said, and Robinton smiled properly at them once.

“I’d appreciate that, thank you,” the Harper said.

Silence fell again, hanging lightly over them. After a moment, Lytol shook himself to action.

“Shall we go have a glass of wine before the dancing starts?” Lytol suggested. “I’ve got a good skein in that we can use for a toast. Benden, of course.”

The group agreed and promptly headed off.

As Lessa sat at a table in the square drinking a glass of Benden and watching the antics of the men around her, she smiled. It had not been her plan, but her life was hers, and she wouldn’t trade one moment of it for any other.


End file.
